paul flannery

Celtics eye Spurs template for success

It’s not a big secret that the Celtics have patterned themselves on the San Antonio Spurs and the parallels between the two teams are numerous.

Like the Spurs, the Celtics are a defense-first team of veterans with a fast point guard, a creative wing scorer and a Hall of Fame anchor in the middle. The difference between San Antonio and Boston, of course, is that Gregg Popovich built the franchise from the ground up, while the Celtics assembled their parts from other places and did it on the fly.

The Spurs have been doing it for 10 years and while one might think they have perfected their blueprint, it’s just not that easy.

“You can talk about it,” Popovich said. “You can practice. But it happens on the court when a team executes defensively and offensively and changes during games and all people participate correctly. That’s how it builds. It takes time.”

Popovich’s influence on Doc Rivers has been profound. Rivers played with the Spurs and was the team’s announcer before Popovich added coaching to his duties, and he often speaks fondly of his time there.

“Pop’s been phenomenal,” Rivers said. “He’s not only been a coach, but he a built a whole program. He did in the right way with character players. The organization is first class and no one would have thought 10 years ago that San Antonio would be the organization that most of the league, and not just in basketball, would model their teams after, and they do.”

Like the Spurs themselves, Pop’s influence on the league has been slow, steady and mostly overlooked. But no team resembles the Spurs on the court more than the Celtics.

“That team you saw, San Antonio, the way they played is usually the way we play,” said Paul Pierce after the Spurs blew them out, 94-73, Sunday night.

Popovich was asked about the team’s similarities before the game and he responded with his trademark sarcasm. “I’ve got enough problems trying to figure out my own team, let alone figure out the Celtics,” he said.

But he may as well of been talking about the Celtics when he offered his thoughts on his team’s progress.

“We’re playing our best basketball right now, thankfully,” he said. “It’s taken us about a month and a half longer than usual to get where we are now, thus the hole that we’re in. The last three or four weeks we’ve played better. We’re a basketball team now, but for a lot of the year we were all over the map for a variety of reasons.

The Celtics have seemed to try to take a page from the Spurs playbook for much of this season. This has been known as the “turn it off/turn it on” approach.

That’s a bit of a misnomer because until recently the Celtics had not done much turning it on. The last time the Spurs won the title they won 25 of 28 games down the stretch and then carried that momentum into the playoffs.

Popovich was asked if there is a specific time when he tries to get his team in gear.

“Our best time has been in March,” he said. “It seems a little tougher this season than it has been, but as long as you’re playing well as the playoffs come then you’re in pretty good shape.”

Like Rivers has done with Kevin Garnett, Popovich has limited Tim Duncan’s playing time keeping him in the 32-minute a night range. He’s also had to make do without Tony Parker, although he hopes to have him back in time for the end of the regular season.

Even though the core Spurs — Duncan, Parker and Ginobli — have been together for almost a decade there is still a learning process every team must go through every season and at times this season the Spurs have struggled. Some have chalked that up to several new faces and younger players getting more of a role.

“It wasn’t only the young guys that weren’t playing defense or playing well, it was everybody,” Ginobli said. “So we can’t just blame that.”

“Trust is a very intangible thing, but you know when it’s there and you know when it’s not there,” Popovich said. “People have to have time to play together to establish that.

“People have to respect and feel confident about each other and their own game and their own role. In that regard it took us a lot longer than usual.”

The Celtics can certainly relate to that. Despite having their core players together for three seasons, it’s still taken time for them to get acclimated to each other. Whether it’s been injuries or any of the other “focus” issues, they have still not found their groove, as evidenced by their play last night.

“You’re just not going to beat them off the bounce,” Rivers said. “You’re just not. And it’s like Pop said to me before the game: ‘You’re not going to beat the Celtics off the bounce.’ And they didn’t. They moved the ball. They did what we were supposed to do.”

Rivers was talking about one game, a game he called “just one of those nights,” but he may as well have been talking about the entire season.

Popovich and the Spurs have built an entire legacy out of doing what they are supposed to do at exactly the right time. Can the Celtics do the same when it counts the most?

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